Photography & Lens-Based Media

So yeah, just started my Photography & Lens-Based Media course there a couple of weeks ago, and it's getting progressively cooler and cooler!

Oh just realised I never did a post about the elective... be grand... here's a link for the video anyways:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXyUNAqud-Q

Enjoy!

So yeah anyways, it's Easter Holidays right now, so I've decided to undertake some practise photography, basically just getting some practise in with working in manual modes, getting used to the correct use of shutter speed/focus/ISO/blah blah blahh

So earlier today meself, my dad and my bro went off into the countryside for the above reasons and these are a select few results of this. They haven't been too heavily edited, just corrected in the RAW to JPG conversion process.

Firstly; shots from Beara peninsula kind-of area:

...some jetty around the same area (just after moving down to the coast):

...moving 'round the peninsula and back up into the hills and homeward direction:

...and finally back into Wesht Cork, stopping off in the Glengariff graveyard for some shots:

So yeah, all in all a highly productive session in the cold cold air of Cork/Kerry! Definitely starting to get more and more comfortable with the ol' manual settings (borrowing my dad's fancy Canon probably helped), keep tuned in for more photographic escapades!

Printmaking! And Contemporary Practice!

It's Monday of the second week of my semester 2 Printmaking elective, and it's pretty cool!

We've been doing drypoints, monoprints, and any mixture of the two we desire - two very nice methods of making prints with vaguely similar yet unique feels. Today has been a day-long woodblock project, but the results are presently drying so no pictures yet!

First of all, here's a select few pictures taking here in Limerick and also up in Dublin over the past week and weekend, a couple of which I've been using and others I plan to use:

Limerick:

Dublin:

The imagery of official signs, messages and bakgrounds combined with unofficial grafitti messages and tags is one I find very interesting and will probably use more in the drypoints/monoprints.

Here's a few drypoints I made a few days ago;

I'm quite happy with the contents of the first three images; these were my first three drypoint prints ever, so I think they came out fairly well, especially in the swirly dirtniness of the black and white ones. The green is possibly a bit too strong in the coloured one, but I think it and the yellow had the desired effect of moulding up the building and increasing the general grottiness.

Naturally the last image is of two incomplete prints. They are based upon the green garage door seen earlier in the post, with the background done in the monoprint medium using tape to make the lines before the green was printed. I'm gonna then use drypoint methods to make the writing and grafitti on the surface.

Sculpture!

So I've been doing Sculpture as my first elective in Semester 2. It's been a very... interesting experience, definitely has been resulting in me creating the kind of sculpture I'd never have expected to create.

My verb that I've been working off is the verb to connect, so immediately I began to look at and brainstorm connective materials; tar, glue, chewing gum, drink stains (very sticky, especially coffee stains). I also thought about connective materials of the other kind such as wire, metal, and string.

This line of thought led to my first experiment, covering a cast of my hand in chewing gum:

As it turns out, there's not really any chance of this stuff coming off as I'd hoped so as this it shall stay!

I started to think about bodily connections, of all kinds; nerves, brain waves, et cetera. This led me also to think about not just connection, but dis-connections of the same kinds.

I'm actually quite happy with this piece, looking at connection of the body to itself and the outer world, shown through the way the wire holds the pieces of paper. We see the world through not just our eyes but also our minds, and this piece shows how going to great depths of mental and visual exploration of the world can result in confusion; disconnection; altered states of sensory awareness (of the world and the self).

Mmm m mm

This theme of connection and disconnection also resulted in this piece; a cast of my hand smashed and re-connected in an altered way.

My project has now taken a decidedly creepier, stranger turn...

I decided to go down to our friends at the material store and asked them for any old moulds that they had no need of any longer. They gave me the front and back half of a doll, and a cow's tongue. I also found two other moulds (a wooden spoon and a brush) but these weren't that useful.

So after reproducing these objects, several times in the case of the baby, I went down the courtyard with my trusty rusty steel bar and smashed them to within an inch of their distinctly white and powdery lives.

The resulting pieces I then took up to the studio and began experimenting with various re-connections of all of them. I also included a new cast of my hand;

These are the resulting experiments in connection;

The last one's my favourite, probably closely followed by the weird spider-baby...

Issue #9

Okay, let's get straight into this business; no time for idle chit-chat this late in the year!

First up, here's a couple of prints I made t'other day for the idea I'm working on at the moment (y'know, the ol' nerves flying out/exploring space thing)

I think these came out pretty nice, I really like the strong, almost electric blue colour of the nerves. A good lil' exploration of this current idea, plus I really like the medium of woodblock printing. Incidentally, here's a picture of the actual woodblock; often I think the woodblocks themselves turn out either as nice or nicer than the actual prints.

In other news, the mono prints are coming on quite nicely but unfortunately it looks like I probably won't get the whole thing finished before Christmas what with there only being Tuesday left.

Now, for the main event, the plat principal! I've been working for the past couple of days on a hand sculpture, going back partially to a brief idea I had before of hands coming into spaces, exploring or invading the space, and combining my current line of thought. Here's the result of the first day of work, just the thick wire frame made up of rings and four straight supports with the hand on top extending off, all just secured together with a lot of tightly wrapped tape.

Then yesterday I basically did some reinforcing work, using some thinner wire to secure and strengthen the tape, and making the fingers more finger-ish:

Next stage will be making of the nerves which'll be starting at the floor and working up into the hand and fingers then extending out of them and splaying out around whatever space the hand occupies. These nerves will probably be done with some kind of electrical wire, and I may include some kind of red material or yarn to represent muscles and stuff.